‘I know they’re struggling right now but I hope that Twitter never goes out of business, because without them, we’d never know who the president really is’ ... Trevor Noah.
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Late-night TV hosts on Trump: 'The world's most famous liar'

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Late-night hosts discussed the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration’s ties with Russia.

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert was amazed that things had spiraled out of control this soon. “The word dumpster fire gets thrown about so casually these days, but when a special counsel gets appointed to investigate your administration just four months in, that’s a new high and low,” he said.

He joked: “This is a snowball just at the top of a hill right now, if the snow were brown and came out the back of a bull.”

Reports suggested that the White House was only informed of the special counsel 30 minutes before it was officially announced. “Sean Spicer barely had time to dive in the hedges and cover himself with mud,” he said.

Colbert took great pleasure in the fact that it was deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein who made the decision as he was originally the fall guy for Comey’s firing. While Trump tried to throw him under the bus, Colbert said: “He’s actually the bus driver.”

He believes the choice of the former FBI director Robert Mueller will scare Trump as he’s “a competent adult who owes him nothing and who, I’m guessing, has not seen The Apprentice”.

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah expressed delight over the news. “You know what that means?” he said. “Trump is going to prison. Well, not really, he’s going to serve two terms, probably. Two terms in prison!”

He then examined Mueller’s popularity within Washington. “Forget investigating the president, just make this guy the president,” he said. “Seriously. Good at his job and everybody loves him? He’s like a reverse Donald Trump. I bet his hands are huge.”

After the White House released a calm, even-handed official statement addressing the special counsel, Trump woke the morning after to tweet angrily. On CNN , the statement and the tweets were compared with a beleaguered journalist glumly announcing that Trump was awake and angry, which Noah said “sounds less like a president and more like we’re being ruled by the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk ”.

Noah then spoke of the importance of the president’s ability to share his unfiltered thoughts with people. “I know they’re struggling right now but I hope that Twitter never goes out of business because without them, we’d never know who the president really is,” he said.

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host started by talking about the speed of scandalous information that keeps arriving. “This isn’t Watergate, it’s the Watergate express,” he said.

News has emerged that Trump chose to hire the former national security adviser Michael Flynn even though he was already under investigation for taking money from Turkey for lobbying. “That’s like hiring a babysitter who’s still wearing one handcuff,” he said.

Meyers played campaign footage of Trump talking about hiring a special prosecutor when he became president, in reference to Hillary Clinton. “It’s literally the only campaign promise he’s actually kept,” he said. “It’s almost like Donald Trump is a time traveler sent to warn us about himself.”

Reports have also suggested that Trump is continuing to struggle with his attention span during intelligence briefings so his people have to keep inserting his name to ensure he remains engaged. “Soon, they’re going to have to start writing his intelligence briefings on a mirror,” he said.